Atlas Shrugged – Day 091 – pp. 972-981
“You can accept our repentance,” said Lillian in a voice glassy with caution. “I only want you to know that whatever I’ve done, I’ve done it because I loved you.”
Hank ain’t listening to that.
Mother Rearden is approaching panic mode.
“What’s happened to you? What’s changed you like that? You don’t seem to be human anymore!”
Recognition. Hank’s recognition of the situation, and their lack of recognition of his value. I mean had they recognized his value and been supportive of him a few years back, there’d be no problem now. But now he’s recognized the position they want to put him in. And recognized he has the upper hand. And recognized that he doesn’t care anymore. Well, that’s three strikes.
The pleading goes on.
“Aren’t you human?… Aren’t you capable of any love at all?”
I wonder. How much abuse from ones family one would have to take before you could completely turn your back on them like this?
I’m also wondering if the three of them have turned sincere? All the pleading. Throwing themselves at his mercy. I doubt it.
Then mama slips up.
“If you abandon us, we’re lost. If you give up and vanish, like all those men who–“
Ah ha! I was right.
They’re all (and by all I mean Hank’s family and the looters) afraid he’s going to pack up and vanish. Hank and Dagny are all John Galt needs to complete the whole collection. Dagny’s already nationalized. Hank is at the precipice.
“You can’t quit now! You could have, last year, but not now! Not today! You can’t turn deserter, because now they take it our on your family. They’ll leave us penniless, they’ll seize everything, they’ll leave us to starve, they’ll -“
So much for the sincerity question.
“Keep still!” cried Lillian, more adept than the others at reading danger signs in Rearden’s face.
Hank explains to Mom.
“You regret that you’ve hurt me and, as your atonement for it, you ask that I offer myself to total immolation.”
Philip chimes in.
“You won’t be able to quit and run away… You can’t run away without money.”
“Thanks, Philip.”
Now he’s realized the real reason for the frozen assets. And even better…
“He was seeing the final contradiction, the grotesque absurdity at the end of the irrationalists’ game…”
But Lillian’s going to take one more stab at him.
“Well, I have something to tell you.”
Could she actually be broaching the Jim Taggart subject?
As she’s standing between him and the door, Hank has an epiphany on love.
“If to choose a person as the constant center of one’s concern, as the focus of one’s view of life, was to love — he thought — then it was true that she loved him; but if, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence — then to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only form and equivalent of love. … unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, … as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it… It was his self-esteem she sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone’s will…”
[As an aside to this, I recently watch an interesting TED video on the subject of shame and worthiness. If you’re not busy for the next 20 minutes or so, have a look.]
OK, back to the book.
“Well, I think you’d like to know that your wife’s been laid by another man! … not with some great, noble lover, but with the scummiest louse, with Jim Taggart!”
Talk about shooting blanks. Seriously, at this point how loathsome does a person have to get to try to inflict pain as a last resort when all else is lost.
“He had not known what the destruction of a person would be like; but he knew he was seeing the destruction of Lillian.”
Mom takes one final shot.
“Are you really incapable of forgiveness?”
“No, Mother,… I’m not. I would have forgiven the past — if, today, you had urged me to quit and disappear.”
And with that, he’s out.
Cut to the big looter meeting. Being held in Francisco’s old suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. By now we know the players.
“All right,” said Rearden… “what did you want?”
Getting right to the point.
“We’re here as your friends, Mr. Rearden…”
“We’re anxious to avail ourselves of your outstanding ability…”
“It’s men like you we need in Washington DC…”
Hank don’t cooperate at the point of a gun.
“Can’t we all stand together for the sake of the country in this hour of emergency?”
“Cut it boys… You’ve prepared some new gimmick to spring on the steel industry. What is it?”
They start to brace him, in the softest terms possible, about their plan to nationalize the steel industry. They turn to Jimmy Taggart, who seems to be on the downswing of one of his bipolar episodes. Tell him how great the Railroad Unification plan worked, Jimmy.
Works great! Except that it’s taking more time than they expected.
I like this next bit from Hank.
“No doubt about that. Why do you ask the stooge to waste my time? What has the Railroad Unification Plan to do with me?”
(Hehe – Jimmy the Stooge.)
Then they spring it on him. Why it’s the same plan they want to apply to the steel industry. They lay out the details for him.
Of course, Hank, grounded in reality, does the math for them.
“…Orren Boyle owns 60 open hearth furnaces, one-third of them standing idle and the rest producing an average of 300 tons of steel per furnace per day. I own 20 open hearth furnaces, working at capacity, producing 750 tons of Rearden Metal per furnace per day. So we own 80 ‘pooled’ furnaces with a ‘pooled’ output of 27,000 tons, which makes an average of 337.5 tons per furnace. Each day of the year, I, producing 15,000 tons, will be paid for 6,750 tons. Boyle, producing 12,000 tons will be paid for 20,250 tons. … Now how long do you expect me to last under your plan?”
That’s some fast math.
“In time of national peril, it is your duty to serve, suffer and work for the salvation of the country!”
“I don’t see why pumping my earnings into Orren Boyle’s pocket is going to save the country.”
Point Hank.
“I think,” Rearden said slowly, “that the country needs me much more than it needs Orren Boyle.”
Man, he’s on a roll now.
How long do they expect him to operate at a loss?
But they have faith in him. He’ll manage.
Just like they had faith in those “Taggart boys” getting the grain out of Minnesota…
Oh! It’s gettin’ good. To be continued…